


This Most Innate Possibility

by vanishingbyler



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-27 13:10:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19013560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanishingbyler/pseuds/vanishingbyler
Summary: I wonder what this means for who I am.or, Theo questions what Boris is to him.





	This Most Innate Possibility

**Author's Note:**

> since the trailer drops this afternoon i figured i may as well post smth
> 
> this is MESSY i wrote it in about 15 minutes based off a prompt "not from your perspective"
> 
> i don't usually write in first person & i don't usually write introspective stuff but hey! here's this!
> 
> i love boreo but even more so i love the fact their relationship is never succinctly defined so i scribbled up a lil thing don't mind me

Boris looks different in the dark than he does in the light. I’m not yet sure if that’s bad or good, but I know it keeps me awake long through the night as he snores softly across the room.

 

His hair curls around hi face and splays across the pillo. Darkness frames him in such a way that the shadows cast across his cheeks resemble the clouds I used to watch with my mother in the earliest summers of my life. The ruggedness he tries to perform in daylight slips away to reveal what I’ve always thought to be the purest form of him - young, fearless yet terrified all at once, skin etched with understanding beyond his years.

 

I wonder why I’ve never looked at the women in my life like this.

  
  
  


When I spent my nights with nameless feminine faces,it barely seemed worth looking across the covers to see them. They were all the same, really - blonde and sex stained, all curves and no edges. They blend together, each one just another magazine-style beauty that made no more impact on me than the billboard models I see on almost every street corner.

 

Even Pippa - beautiful Pippa, the first love of my life - never lent herself to my late night ruminations the way he does. She's perfectly imperfect, the way books describe their underdog female protagonists. If you stare too long she melts, in a way. You begin to notice the crookedness of her smile, and the way one eye sits a little higher than the other - breathtaking in so many ways, but what always free me to her was how she knew my pain in such intimate, unmatched detail. Our shared experience bonded us in a way nothing else could, tying us with strings and fixing us like glue, chained to each other for eternity and longer. That's not where her beauty stems from, but it's what attracts me, and I'm realising as we age how this lifetime of "love" may be little more than desperation to connect.

 

He, on the other hand, is all that and more. He carries the world and the crevices of his face, sunken cheekbones and wild eyes leaking struggles like gasoline set to light. The tribulations of his frantic youth are as much a part of him as his ebony eyes and I lose myself in it time and time again. 

 

Beautiful is not the right word for Boris - at first glance he's plain, possibly even less if you don't consider years of drug abuse showing in a face to be a captivating look. Has what you describe as "unique" when trying to be polite, and there really is no reason for me to be as drawn to him as I am (and have been for as long as I can remember).

 

My nights always dissolve back into thoughts of him, and it's worse now he's back in my life. Whether I'm sober or not, I lose myself in addled fantasies of our life together, long evenings defined by his winsome smiles and almost suicidally philosophical conversations.

 

Sometimes, when I hate myself even more so than usual, I allow myself to relive those moments I never understood. Questions spring up like weeds, unwanted, searing into my consciousness no matter what I do.

 

At the time, I let myself believe that what happened between us was just what teenagers  _ do.  _ At that time, Boris was my entire world (it's almost painful to admit that he still is) and everything I did with him became the backbone of my youth. I didn't have to consider how  _ boys don't hold each other, boys don't kiss each other, boys don't stare into one another's eyes like they're all that holds up the universe.  _ The things we did were my normal, even if in every other aspect we were anything but. It wasn't until I returned to New York, with Boris' corrosive absence making itself known, that it struck me how surreally intimate the whole thing really was. When I was cold and alone, his fiery touch would warm my face, arms  _ (chest, stomach, everywhere)  _ as a ghost of what it used to be. 

 

The sight of him burns like a star, the only star in my universe (and God, how terrifying that notion is to my fully conscious mind).

 

I used to picture him wherever I went - ghostly, absent, but with me always. 

 

Daylight brought the version of him I knew best, illuminated and illuminating, laughing and gesticulating and questioning my stupider choices. Once the sun went down, however, my favourite Boris would return. Encased in brooding shadow, he would silently stare me down and I'd wonder if I was going insane. His eyes, dark enough to look almost black, enticed me like a piece of fine art. It felt like keeping a memory alive, and my stomach still drops with shame knowing I can't even picture my mother's eyes on such intricacy. 

 

More so than his eyes, I'm haunted by his lips. I don't know them well - there were very few times that they were acquainted with my own - but when my treacherous mind wanders, there's part of me that wishes there were more. 

 

Doodles on napkins in restaurants and coffee shops become pieces of a face, though never a whole person. Each facet, though, is Boris. Lips come last, and never look so polished as anything else.

 

I wonder what this means for who I am. There's some comfort in never being fully formed, and at times I praise myself for being incomplete and open to growth. This, however, is something I  _ need  _ to know but never want to look for. I'm so afraid of this most innate possibility that when I ponder too long I forget how to breathe. 

 

Boris looks different in the dark than he does in the light. I'm not yet sure if that's good or bad. 


End file.
